Dr James Zogbys comments about Bahrain are quite meaningful. He cited the unemployment as the real cause of trouble, especially it being double than its neighbors the Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He being the president of Arab American Institute at Washington DC is taken as an authority on the Arab world and its complexity. The comments clearly mean that the turn of events are going to take place even in those countries whose unemployment ratio is little better, but unfortunately they are in the same neighborhood.
The Saudi government did two things immediately; one, they sent troops to help the rulers of Bahrain. They being Sunni are pronouncedly uncomfortable to rule the Shia majority. Two, the Saudis monarch issued a number of sooth-seeking decrees with political intent and social outreach. This was meant to create a bunker of good hope around the Arabian Peninsula.
The fire engulfing the Gulf and Middle East is not accidental, it is neither incremental to some egalitarian principles of democracy nor rule of law. Libya is now the Gordian knot of the region; it is also the political smiley of the Kosovo crisis in which players readjusted their feet frequently to accrue the maximum of balance in the minimum of time.
Is it the repressive regimes or the mere love of democratic dogmas which is the cause of this western drive towards the orient? Complete region is now a tinder box, ready to catch fire with a single match stick of a hope for a better social order.
Having a look on the geographical tangent of the crisis is enough to run shivers down the spine of the faithful. The upheaval started from Tunisia, moved to Egypt, then to Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and now Syria. It is almost making a halo around Saudi Arabia with Iran being in the shadow of a rising anathema for the Saudi monarch. The string is tightening to strangulate the very identity of Arab League into a new economic zone rather than being taken as a historical entity.
ABID LATIF SINDHU
Islamabad
